Lowborn - Kerry Hudson

'Totally engrossing and deliciously feisty' Bernadine Evaristo

A powerful, personal agenda-changing exploration of poverty in today's Britain.

'When every day of your life you have been told you have nothing of value to offer, that you are worth nothing to society, can you ever escape that sense of being 'lowborn' no matter how far you've come?'

Kerry Hudson is proudly working class but she was never proudly poor. The poverty she grew up in was all-encompassing, grinding and often dehumanising. Always on the move with her single mother, Kerry attended nine primary schools and five secondaries, living in B&Bs and council flats. She scores eight out of ten on the Adverse Childhood Experiences measure of childhood trauma.

Twenty years later, Kerry's life is unrecognisable. She's a prizewinning novelist who has travelled the world. She has a secure home, a loving partner and access to art, music, film and books. But she often finds herself looking over her shoulder, caught somehow between two worlds.

Lowborn is Kerry's exploration of where she came from. She revisits the towns she grew up in to try to discover what being poor really means in Britain today and whether anything has changed.

'One of the most important books of the year' Guardian

Kerry Hudson was born in Aberdeen. Her first novel, Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-cream Float Before He Stole My Ma, won the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust First Book Award and was shortlisted for an array of prizes including the Guardian First Book Award and the Sky Arts Awards. Thirst, her second novel, won the prestigious prix Femina etranger. Lowborn is her first work of non-fiction, and her journey has led to a highly successful column for the Pool. She currently lives in Liverpool.

I loved Lowborn... A powerful exploration of Hudson's working-class childhood and its legacy
David Nicholls, author of One Day

Elegant, compassionate and powerful… tells the hidden story of what it means to be poor in Britain today
Sunday Express - Charlotte Heathcote

Compelling, fascinating and well-written, undeniably grim but peppered with humour and tenderness...Hudson demonstrates that only by lifting whole communities out of poverty...can we hope to avoid consigning children and young people like her - vulnerable and blameless - to the worst of lives
Daily Telegraph - Kit de Waal

Lowborn is an insider's view of the complexities of modern-day poverty, written with humour and compassion, but without judgement. It should be required reading for anyone who unknowingly believes poverty is a personal choice and that if you work hard enough you'll avoid its fate… a fearless writer, an inspiring woman
Sunday Times - Jackie Annesley

Lowborn is in part an indictment of a country that claims to still have a functioning welfare state… Most of all, it is a moving portrait of the survival and eventual flourishing of a remarkable spirit
Guardian - John Harris

Totally engrossing and deliciously feisty...It really brings home how under-represented working class lives and impoverished childhoods have been in our literary culture'
Bernadine Evaristo

Where there are few working-class stories, there are fewer still from working-class women. Lowborn stands out as rare, as well as compassionately and skilfully told… Some books help us understand the world around us. Others do that, and make us feel less alone in it, too. Lowborn is one such book, holding out a hand of friendship to anyone who might pick it up and find something forgotten or familiar among its pages
Scotsman - Laura Waddell

Beautifully written but with emotional hand grenades detonating on almost every page…a breathtaking odyssey
Sunday Times - Stephen McGinty

Kerry Hudson invites us to really understand the complexities of being born working class in Britain. Buy it, read it, tell everyone about it
Jack Monroe

I wish I'd had access to such honest and relatable work as Hudson's when I was younger. She proves that successful women can have a working-class story
Stylist - Hollie Richardson

Kerry Hudson blew me away, opened my eyes
You're Booked - Philippa Perry, author of The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read

Hudson has written a moving and readable account of growing up in the poorest section of society. Her book is also a meditation on social mobility… Hudson's life is proof that a person can, against the odds, make a success of themselves. In Lowborn, she shows us very clearly why so many do not
The Times - James Bloodworth

Lowborn is the opposite of a misery memoir. The chapters alternate between Hudson's raw memories and accounts of her present-day attempts to confront them. There's warmth and courage as well as pain and ultimately triumph here
New Statesman

A book that cuts like a knife
Spectator

Paints a near-dystopian portrait of Brexit-age Britain… Lowborn is a powerful testimonial… Here's hoping it gives others the courage to tell their version of this story, at high volume
Irish Times - Peter Murphy